History+of+the+Thermometer

History of the Thermometer The thermometer was not a single invention, but a development. The thermometer changed over time. Cornelius Drebbel, Robert Fludd, Galileo Galilei, and Santorio Santorio were all contributors to the making of the thermometer. Each scientist had his own type of thermometer. Galileo made his type of thermometer is 1593. He invented it in Italy. His thermometer used the principal of buoyancy. Buoyancy determines whether an object floats or sinks. There are colored bubbles floating in a tube of water and they have a metal tag that indicates the temperature. These tags are different in weight. The bubbles aren’t the same in size and shape because they were hand-blown. The basic idea is that when the temperature outside changes, so does the water in the thermometer. When the water temperature changes, it either contracts or expands, changing the density of the water. Therefore, the bubbles with either float to the top or sink to the bottom. Santorio Santorio was a friend of Galileo and adapted the invention to measure the body’s change in temperature due to illnesses. Ferdinando II de’ Medici made the first red wine filled thermometer in 1654. This was a circular thermometer. According to the expansion and contraction of the liquid, the wine would curl in a circular tube. In 1714, Gabriel Fahrenheit invented the first mercury thermometer. The making of mercury thermometers has stopped because mercury is very toxic to humans. We also don’t use red wine because we can just dye alcohol red. These thermometers differ from the ones we use today. Today, we have a small, thin, vertical tube filled with alcohol to measure the temperature of a substance. We use the principle of contraction and expansion to make these thermometers. As something gets warmer, it expands. As an object gets colder, is contracts. This is why the liquid inside a thermometer goes up and down, according to the temperature it’s in. Even today, thermometers are still evolving, especially in the medical field. As new technology evolves, scientists can come up with a new type of thermometer based on that new technology.